ACTUAL PROOF: NEW YORK TIMES PLAYLIST

Had to repost this family:

"Now and then it’s easy to guess that Blk Jks, from Johannesburg, are an African band on their four-song “Mystery EP” (Robinson Projects, available for download from digital.othermusic.com). That’s when they go bounding into three-chord South African township grooves in “Lakeside” or overlay the reggae foundation of “Summertime” with syncopated guitars. But Blk Jks make their music in a global swirl of possibilities; they are an art-rock band. Produced in New York by Brandon Curtis of the band Secret Machines, the songs on the EP are far closer to TV on the Radio and the Mars Volta than they are to Ladysmith Black Mambazo. While the lyrics (mostly in English) ponder philosophical quandaries — “All the wise men ’round the world don’t know the answers” — the band’s quick-fingered, multilayered vamps well up out of murky echoes, piling jubilation atop the anxiety, before submerging again. An earlier Blk Jks song, “Transit Camp,” is available (from Emusic or CD Baby) on the South African compilation “Phrased Differently” (Runway Music); less vertiginously produced and furiously propulsive, it has the band “smiling into oblivion, then dreaming swift into the heart of the abyss.”

Tree free reading here.